


two slow dancers, last ones out

by cryptidgay



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, past relationship, pre-unknowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidgay/pseuds/cryptidgay
Summary: “Just apologize,” Jon whispers to his mirror-self. “It can’t possibly be that difficult.”
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Jonathan Sims/Tim Stoker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 85





	two slow dancers, last ones out

**Author's Note:**

> title from two slow dancers by mitski. no specific content warnings apply, but canon-typical levels of sadness.

The Great Yarmouth bed and breakfast is quaint if you’re feeling complimentary and cloying if not, and it is safe to say that none of the Archive’s wayward quartet of circus-thwarters are feeling particularly generous at the moment. It isn’t a question that Daisy will be bunking with Basira. Jon’d asked, in that shaky-voiced hesitant way of his, skirting around anything with an actual question mark at the end for fear of getting staticky, what the _roommate arrangements_ would be, and Daisy had looked between him and the two double-room skeleton keys with enough scorn to wilt a wildflower.

He hadn’t asked again.

Their arrival comes late enough that it’s straight to bed with them, and Jon could count the amount of words exchanged between himself and Tim on one hand. Jon tries. The things he wants to say keep getting caught in his throat, and there is _so much_ he wishes he could say that it jumbles and ties itself into knots there until he can hardly breathe, until he has to splash water on his face in the tiny room’s tiny bathroom and try to get a handle on himself.

“Just apologize,” he whispers to his mirror-self. “It can’t _possibly_ be that difficult.”

It is, and he doesn’t. 

When he makes his way back into their room, Tim is already laying down on the window side of their single bed, facing pointedly away from Jon with the light on his side of the room turned off. Jon’s painstakingly careful not to make a sound, changing into his pajamas with the practiced slowness of someone who learned to be quiet and unobtrusive at a very young age by necessity, and has never shaken the habit. Every rustle of fabric makes him wince.

Tim isn’t asleep. Jon knows his eyes are open without actually looking, feels the way they’re burrowing holes into the adjacent wall. Jon acts like he is, because it’s easier — simpler to pretend he’s missed his chance to have a conversation. 

When he sits on the opposite edge of the bed, the springs creak like a dying thing, and Jon’s back on his feet before he has a moment to think about it. He feels silly as he settles back down.

Once, Tim would have commented on it, and he can almost hear it: _scared of the bedframe, boss? Want me to check under it for monsters?_ , can almost see that twinkle in Tim’s eye. There’d be an undernote to the teasing, and Jon would know that if he said yes, Tim would lean down to look underneath the bed and give an all-clear, no questions asked. It was so easy to trust Tim, then.

Jon lays in the dark for a long while mouthing words to himself. _I know that things are strained between us,_ he’d say if he were a braver man, _and I know that it is my fault. I’m sorry. It doesn’t help for me to say that, I know, too little and too late, but — I’m sorry._

If he were really to conjure up some courage: _I care about you, Tim. I want you to be safe. You don’t have to forgive me, just — come back from this. Never have to talk to me again if that’s what you’d prefer, once this is all done — though I, I hope that we could be friends again, someday._

They had been friends, once. They’d been more than that, maybe — flashes in his memory, Jon allowing Tim to pull him into a dance in the old researchers’ office after everyone else had gone home, the way Tim had smiled at him like everything would be alright if Jon just allowed himself to smile back, a stolen kiss in the back of a pub during after-work cocktails. Jon’d never let himself ask if it meant anything.

If he were brave, maybe he would ask now. But he’s used up all his bravery in getting to this point, in loading himself into the back of a van and driving off to Yarmouth with a truckfull of explosives and a half-baked plan, in laying down with a full meter of space separating him and Tim but under the same blankets, breathing the same air.

He doesn’t have any left.

**Author's Note:**

> this was initially a snippet of a longer fic, but i couldn't make the full thing work. maybe someday i'll go back to it, but this stands on its own just as well!
> 
> so how we doin about s5 dropping in [checks watch] two days?
> 
> thanks so much for reading! leave a comment! hmu on tumblr @ [dykivist!](http://dykivist.tumblr.com)


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